


Nox Divina

by ataraxetta



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt Noctis, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Blood and Gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 08:40:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13498504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ataraxetta/pseuds/ataraxetta
Summary: Turns out summoning Gods is hard on a body.





	Nox Divina

**Author's Note:**

> Part one of a little Ignoct fic, featuring hurt!Noctis and all four bros being best best best friends. Special thanks as always to concernedlily for moral support (and the couple paragraphs I blatantly stole from her). This is a canon-divergent AU, in that Ifrit and Bahamut are summons and Noctis also receives his summons much earlier in the game, for the sake of my blatant hurt!Noct needs. :) Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!

**Nox Divina (1/2)**

There’s something to be said of their luck since leaving Insomnia - or rather the lack thereof - but stumbling into an actual nest of Malboros is a new low, even for them.

Ignis can only recall bits of the battle between crashing waves of illness, blindness, and disorientation. The monsters’ fetid breath, the slimy tentacles leaving blistering burns on skin, the sound of glass breaking and blessed cool energy soaking in, coming to his senses in time to see Prompto or Gladio or all three go down, tossing Phoenix Downs and Fire spells between them without having to pause or even look at each other, listening to his friends’ screams of pain beneath the shrieks of furious monsters, finally slaying one only for three more to surge forward. Prompto’s perfect aim and magic-infused bullets taking the heads off two of the young Malboros one after the other, Gladio’s greatsword cleaving another in two, trading his own daggers for a spear to break through the hard outer layer and pierce the heart of a fully mature one. And Noctis.

Noctis, a blur of energy and magic, feet never touching the ground, slashing and hacking and cleaving, fire surging from his hand one moment and the cool green relief of restorative magic the next, taking hard hits and picking himself back up, taking harder ones and lying unmoving until the skies rip apart and Ramuh picks him up instead.

Together the four of them kill two, six, nine of the twenty or so in the nest, but in the end it’s the Astrals that win the battle for them. They’ve run out of items, out of energy, out of strength. As seamless as the four of them have become in battle, they’re outmatched, end up helpless, struggling to keep their heads above swamp water, blind and deaf and dumb from the Malboros’ attack.

Fitting, then, that the monumental magic of the Crystal is a visceral, otherworldly thing. Ignis doesn’t need to see or hear - he can feel it in Noctis’s power that binds them, in the ethereal crackle of energy in the air. Noctis holds nothing back, terrified and furious, calling on the gods who have willingly bowed down before him and offered their aid. He calls them sparingly at the start of the battle and then one after another - Ramuh, Titan, Leviathan, Shiva, Bahamut - over and over until finally the most stubborn of them heeds his summons and appears, sweltering heat as the earth shakes and groans and opens up for Ifrit to rise. Ignis is swept out of the way by an enormous paw, hits the ground hard and lies dazed. His hearing returns in time to take in the agonized shrieks of the Malboros in the throes of Ifrit’s Hell Fire.

Then it’s over.

There’s a wash of cool light, a touch of soft fur across Ignis’s arm and then the now-familiar feeling of a pointed little horn pressing delicately to the center of his chest, and the sickness and blindness go too. The evening air is cool, crisp. Birds are singing, a creek is trickling somewhere nearby into the swamp. Ignis rolls to his front and gets to his knees, straightens his glasses to see Prompto and Gladio nearby doing the same.

“Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit,” Prompto’s saying, laughing a little wetly, a little hysterically. “Holy _shit!_ I can’t believe we made it.”

“Yeah, thought we were done,” Gladio admits, sounding rather shaken.

Ignis doesn’t say anything, his eyes on Noctis, who is standing thirty or so feet away at the edge of the swamp with his arm still outstretched, the pure light of a Cure spell still shimmering at his fingertips. His breathing is wet and audible even from so far away, his eyes a deep crimson. Slowly, his arm lowers. He sways, blinks.

His eyes are blue again when he opens them, and then they’re bleeding, blood falling like tears from the outside corners, gushing from his nose, dripping slick and wet from both ears. Ignis is stunned still; they all are, frozen with fear and horror.

Noctis stumbles a step toward them, stops. He lifts his hand to his ashen face, and when it comes back stained red his eyes widen, expression changing under the blood, terrified. Ignis can feel him, Noctis’s magic weak but reaching for him anyway, always, urgent and vital and tinged sharp with his fear. In a small voice, Noctis says, “Ignis?” He manages one more unsteady step before his legs give out beneath him, his face suddenly slack and waxen, mouth open and eyes rolling back into his head as his body begins to seize. He falls.

Ignis’s world stops spinning, tilts on its axis.

He hears the yell of _“Noct!”_ echoing around the clearing before he realises he’s spoken, dragged out of him, tearing from his throat to hit the air raw and bloody. Gladio is closer, and the faster mover even with his bulk. He manages to get to Noct just in time to stop him from hitting his head on the ground, grunting with effort as he takes Noctis’s deadweight. Ignis skids to a halt on his knees next to them a moment later and Gladio doesn’t fight as Ignis pulls Noctis from him and into his own lap, bending over him, frantic.

His hands are covered in Noctis’s blood almost immediately, slippy-red and so much of it it feels fake, like a costume Noctis has put on, like a practical joke and any minute he’ll wipe it away and open his eyes and laugh at Ignis for worrying.

It doesn’t happen. Noctis isn’t joking. He doesn’t even move, still and limp. Noctis’s blood pressure must be rising through the roof, stasis so complete he’s in danger of stroking out, still trickling blood from nose and mouth and eyes. Ignis ignores it, fingers shaking as he feels for Noctis’s pulse.

“Noct, Noct,” Prompto pants, dropping to his knees next to them, his voice tremulous with terror and exertion. He’s as grubby and exhausted and worried as any of them, the fight taking a toll on them all, but Ignis hardly notices any of that. Can’t, not when Noctis’s breaths are fading in his lap. When Prompto shuffles closer, accidentally jostling Ignis and Noctis in his arms as he leans closer over his friend, and Ignis forgets himself in his panic.

“Give him space!” he snarls, and chokes himself off at the sharp slice of guilt that cuts into him when Prompto shrinks away from him, eyes big with shock and wet with tears. Noctis’s pulse is beating under Ignis’s fingers, slow, too slow, and soft, but steady.

“C’mon, hey, it’s okay,” Gladio says, drawing Prompto away and into his side, dropping an arm around his shoulders in a comforting half-hug as Prompto leans on him, gaze fixed on Noctis. Gladio says, “Ignis. _Ignis_. I got no potions left, you got anything?”

No. No, Ignis doesn’t have any left, because he’d used them all, back in the fight, because in the middle of that wretched battle he’d thought he’d known what desperation was.

“I got one,” Prompto blurts, delving into his pockets. He looks almost afraid to creep back in close enough to hand it to Ignis, but Ignis doesn’t need him to; he’s not going to take his hands off Noct even long enough to pour a potion down his unresisting throat. He wants to apologize but can’t pry the words from his trembling mouth, able only to think them uselessly as he manages a sick-feeling smile and jerks his head to invite Prompto closer, _I’m sorry_.

Nevertheless, Prompto seems to understand. He grins back, always so easy to forgive, and unearths the potion from one of his pockets with a triumphant sound as he scrambles back to Noctis’s side. He’s about to break the potion over Noctis like usual, but Gladio catches his hand and says, “He needs to drink some first, in case there’s anything internal.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” Prompto says in a high, quick voice, nodding so vigorously his head must rattle, and rearranges his grip on the flask to pulls the seal away and open the mouth of it instead. Ignis tilts Noctis’s head up a little and between them Gladio and Prompto manage to get a little bit of the potion into him, Ignis stroking gentle fingers over his throat to encourage him to swallow and feel the movement when he does. They wait for a short eternity for the magic to take, and when Noctis finally takes a shuddery breath, slowly rouses enough to actively swallow another mouthful, the relief leaves Ignis trembling. He brushes Noctis’s hair out of his eyes as they flutter open, glazed and dull with exhaustion.

“There he is,” Gladio says, sounding as weak with relief as Ignis feels, smile obvious in his tone. He checks Noctis’s pulse with steady fingers and then pats his torso down gently, feeling for injuries, before taking the open flask from Prompto’s unresisting hands and breaking it over Noctis’s middle. The remainder of their lone potion splashes over his thin chest and torso and is immediately absorbed, leaving behind only the residue of the catalyst that Noctis had used when he created the curative, fizzy bright green energy drink staining his t-shirt and sticky on the patches of skin showing through where the fabric has been shredded. Gladio says, “All right, how we feelin’, princess?”

Noctis croaks out a, “Fine,” and hardly reacts when Gladio gives his hair an affectionate ruffle. His glazed eyes follow Gladio’s hand as it lifts away, gaze passing slowly over Prompto and Gladio, filthy and bruised and grinning, and then up to Ignis, who smiles down at him weakly. Noctis’s brow furrows and he lifts a hand glimmering with healing magic to Ignis’s cheek, where a cut is still bleeding sluggishly. Ignis takes his hand before he can touch it and expend more energy that he doesn’t have and lowers it back down, squeezing briefly when Noctis frowns at him. It would be cute if his face wasn’t still gruesomely streaked in blood.

“Don’t start,” he scolds.

“That was fucking awesome, Noct,” Prompto says earnestly. “Don’t ever do it again, okay?”

Noctis makes a pathetic attempt to wave a hand at him and Prompto laughs, reckless drawn out giggles that are most certainly hysterical this time. He keels over exhaustedly and drops onto his backside in the grass, covering his eyes with shaking hands. “God, what a day. I can’t believe that happened. Did that really happen? That tipster guy at Meldacio said it was just one. He even had a _flyer_. You know how many Malboros were on that flyer?” Prompto holds up a single finger, ever theatric. “You guessed it, one. There was only supposed to be _one._ ” He huffs a loud sigh and rakes his fingers through his hair, dragging it back off his forehead and pulling it tight with his hands flat on top of his head so his whole face moves with it, making him look three-quarters crazed instead of just half. “I knew that was too much cash for a single monster hunt. Bullshit. I’m sleeping for the next ten years.”

Gladio snorts and catches Prompto by the shoulder to keep him upright when he tries to flop onto his back. “Not yet, kid. We still got a nice long hike back to the car, and it’ll be dark soon.” He pats Prompto vaguely on the head at the answering groan of despair. “We can loosen the purse strings a little though, get a room tonight. Right, Iggy? ”

Ignis nods, still unable to tear his eyes away from Noctis and using the time to gently clean the blood from his face with the hem of his soaked shirt. “Yes, of course. We should have enough for a suite, and the reward money for this should cover us for a few days once we cash it in.”

“Days?” Prompto says hopefully.

“We could all use the rest,” Ignis replies. Noctis lies shivering and pale in Ignis’s lap, abnormally quiet even for him, his gaze distant and unfocused and his reaction time slow when Ignis strokes his wrist and says his name. He’s still dangerously drained and very weak, lacking the energy to even keep his body heat at a normal level in the cold air, and Ignis can tell how shaken he is by what happened. He needs real rest. They all do.

No one is faring well after such an absolute clusterfuck of a battle, and even with the motivation of a hot shower and a real bed at the finish line, it takes longer than it should to finally gather their wits enough to move, spurred on by the sudden crash of thunder and the clouds opening up overhead with a steady rainfall. Gladio gathers Noctis carefully up into his arms and stands, and it’s testament to how poorly Noctis must be feeling that he doesn’t protest being picked up like a child or insist on trying to make it to the car on his own two feet as he normally would, but curls up a bit as though to make himself smaller and tiredly rests his cheek on Gladio’s chest.

“Noct,” Prompto says gently, apparently lost for other words. He’s twitchy and restless with worry, freckles stark on his too-pale face and fists clenched at his sides. As Gladio turns and starts to make his way out of the swamp toward the walking trail, Ignis hangs back with Prompto for a moment and rests a hand on his shoulder.

“He’ll be all right,” says Ignis.

“Yeah, I know. He’s just…” Prompto murmurs, trailing off into silence for several seconds, lost in thought as they start off after Gladio’s retreating form. Eventually, he says, “He seems scared, y'know? Seems unlike him. Or, I dunno, maybe it’s not. He’s been dealing with this stuff his whole life, right? Maybe he’s always been scared and I just never knew.”

Ignis feels a tug at his heartstrings in the face of his friend’s obvious uncertainty, wishing he could offer some encouragement or words of comfort and reassurance that Prompto’s chronic insecurity would allow him to actually believe and knowing nothing but time and experience will be able to bolster his fractured confidence.

“He is, I know. As are we all, but Noct will be fine. We’ll make sure of it, as soon as we’re out of this bloody swamp,” Ignis tells him in his kindest voice, returning the faint grateful smile Prompto gives him. “So, shall we?”

 

**tbc**


End file.
